Three iOS 9 battery management tricks that will delight you

iOS 9 includes new ways to keep track of the battery life on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch. Learn the ins and outs of using these management techniques.

Image: Cory Bohon/TechRepublic

Battery life has always been stellar on iOS devices, and with each release of iOS, Apple seems to tighten the requirements in order to eek out even more. Here are three tricks for finding out which apps use the most battery life on your devices running iOS 9.

1: Open the Notification Center battery life widget

If you want to check the battery status of your iOS device and all of the Bluetooth devices that are connected to it, you can do that with iOS 9. Follow these steps to turn on the Notification Center widget.

Open Notification Center by pulling down from the top of the screen.

Tap Today.

Scroll to the bottom of the list and tap Edit and then tap the green + button beside the Batteries widget.

Now you'll see the Batteries widget appear in Notification Center's Today section whenever you swipe down from the top of the screen (Figure A).

Figure A

Screenshot: Cory Bohon/TechRepublic

See the battery life of your iOS device and connected Bluetooth accessories from the Today section of the Notification Center.

2: Get detailed power usage for each app

Sometimes you may want to know what apps are using the most battery life on your devices so you can tweak your usage habits whenever you're in a low-powered environment. With iOS 9, you can see exactly what apps have been eating your battery life by following these steps.

Open the Settings app.

Navigate to the new Battery section.

Under Battery Usage, select either Last 24 Hours or Last 6 Days, and then select the clock icon (Figure B).

Figure B

This section lets you see which apps are using the most battery life.

This view will give you an overview of the apps that you've been using and how they're affecting your battery life.

3: Enable Low Power Mode

When your device reaches 20% battery life, iOS 9 will alert you to turn on Low Power Mode, which will turn off automatic mail fetches, background app updates, and other systemwide toggles in order to help you get a few extra hours of battery life (depending on your use cases). Low Power Mode will remain on (though you can turn if off at any time) until the device has been charged to at least 80% battery life.

You can toggle Low Power Mode off and on manually or by performing the following steps.

Open the Settings app.

Navigate to the Battery section.

Enable the toggle for Low Power Mode.

The battery indicator in the status bar will turn yellow, showing that you are in Low Power Mode.

By Cory Bohon

Cory Bohon is an indie developer specializing in iOS and OS X development. He runs a software company called Cocoa App and is also a developer at MartianCraft. He was introduced to technology at an early age and has been writing about his favorite te...

Disclosure

Cory Bohon is an indie developer, creating both iOS and OS X applications at Cocoa App (his own company), MartianCraft, and for various other clients. As a part of full disclosure, he does not write about any software that he has created or has helped to create through these outlets.

Full Bio

Cory Bohon is an indie developer specializing in iOS and OS X development. He runs a software company called Cocoa App and is also a developer at MartianCraft. He was introduced to technology at an early age and has been writing about his favorite technology part-time since 2007. He runs a development blog named ObjDev when he isn’t writing about consumer tech.